A baby boy who was born with most of his vital organs outside his body is set to leave hospital for the first time so he can spend Christmas with his family.
Four weeks before Jake O’Donovan’s arrival, his parents Jenny and Alex were warned their son had less than a 5% chance of survival outside the womb.
Jenny, from Tralee, Co Kerry, said: “They basically told us to bring the family together and we met with a bereavement counsellor, they just did not foresee Jake surviving.”
The mum was scheduled to give birth in Dublin but she went into labour two days early in Co Kerry.
An ambulance could only get her as far as Cork before she was rushed to theatre for a C-section.
Jenny said: “The whole time all we were thinking was, ‘Are we going to get to see him? Are we going to get to hold him? How long will we have with him?’
“But within the next half an hour they said, ‘He’s actually doing quite well and we’re going to get the team down from Dublin’.”
From there, Jenny said hours turned into days, days to weeks, weeks to months and now, 13 months later,
Jake is thriving and about to make his first journey home.
While the tot proved everybody wrong with his miraculous recovery, Jenny said the journey was not without its challenges.
Jake had many near fatal setbacks, including sepsis four times.
His mum added: “We were called in a few times to be told there’s no more they could do for him unless the antibiotics started to work.
“It’s been a very long, tough journey but Jake’s defeated everything so far”.
Getting home for Christmas seemed like an impossibility but with the help of hospital staff, the Kerry Ambulance Service – in which Jenny is a paramedic – friends and family, Jake will get to open presents from Santa at home.
She said: “The hospital has gone above and beyond to make this happen.”
